This is the college’s prerogative, certainly. George Will has no right to speak at Scripps. Nevertheless...Thank you. Next!
I really don't see what's so hard about this. This is even less on the line than the cases involving all those millionaires were not allowed to keep their positions just because the PR wind shifted and -- oh yeah -- their contracts said they couldn't. Liberty University doesn't have to let me speak at their events, and Scripps doesn't have to let Will speak at theirs. Too bad for both of us.
Call me when they show this kind of interest when some poor person loses his job.
Shorter CCWC: every person and institution should be conservative.
ReplyDeleteDipped my tootsies off the boat -
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, the president should recognize that her approach is wholly
incompatible with the campus’s professed desire to bring “irregular
speakers to campus” and to expose their students to “a range of opinions
about the world — especially opinions with which we may not agree, or
think we do not agree.”
Well! We can all, therefore, be sure that were Scripps to invite, oh, say, Noam Chomsky to speak, or someone from CAIR, that Mr. Charles would be honor bound to defend their right to...
...what was that?
Oh?
Really?
Huh.
Never mind.
"Scripps Confirms that George Will Was Disinvited Because of His Column on Campus Rape"
ReplyDeleteAlternate: "Conservative shocked that conservative blatherings have consequences"
Complaining about how yet another arch-conservative is not being allowed to speak at someone else's non-partisan event? Aren't conservatives the ones who are always going on ad nauseum about the entitlement society?
ReplyDeleteHey! Chuck is a man of unbending principle: Liberals should be silenced and conservatives be given the floor everywhere, always.
ReplyDeleteAt least it's consistent.
Will didn't lose his job, he lost a single speaking gig. And since he gets over $12K in honorarium for maybe an hour's work? He can buy some pity elsewhere.
ReplyDelete"Mumble mumble bootstraps something something."
ReplyDeleteShorter Charles C.W. Cooke: "Wait, there are consequences to making uninformed, offensive and generally shitty statements? When did this happen?"
ReplyDeleteThey are all about the dignity of work, so long as work is
ReplyDeleteshilling for evil. But ask for a living wage...
Cooke's previous column on this was even more long-winded——one long screech of "b-b-but we're entitled!"
ReplyDeleteInteresting that in neither piece did Cooke actually link to Will's "Sexual Victimhood: A Coveted Status That Confers Privileges" column, or quote any of the material which may have led to Scripps' decision.
Hey, remember that John Derbyshire guy? Remember when he was fired from that magazine for having slight differences of opinion with the people running it over the statistical likelihood of black people being criminals?
ReplyDelete"In other words... [that magazine] decided that there is one truth and one truth only in this area, and that all dissenters are therefore inadmissable."
If I could only remember which magazine it was that committed that crime against the intellect by silencing Derbyshire's views just because they were different.
Something rhyming with "Bashional Leefoo", I think.
ReplyDeleteThis is 3C1W's prerogative, certainly. I have no right to make him pay me to explain interesting theory about why conservatives shouldn't be left alone with goats. Nevertheless...
ReplyDeleteCall me when they show this kind of interest when some poor person loses his job.
ReplyDeleteThere was that rodeo clown. But they forgot about him pretty quick.
My God, hasn't this man suffered enough!? George Will's career has been absolutely destroyed, he's been blackballed and his writings buried! He desperately needed this job just to make rent! He hadn't had a paycheck in months, this was last chance, and you took it away, you heartless bastards! When will the George Will's of the world get to have a voice in this sick society? When will they finally catch a break?
ReplyDeleteTo a conservative, a "bootstrap" is something you flay poor people with.
ReplyDeleteThey want to frame this as left/right, liberal/conservative. Really it's about an out-of-touch old bastard using his prominence to muddy up the discourse with heartless slurs.
ReplyDeleteLost a speaking gig? He got off lucky.
And, uh, just read two or three columns George has written any time in the last 10 years and you'll have the gist of what he going to say anyway. I mean really he's a 3 trick pony on his good days.
ReplyDeleteyou can almost see the monocle falling out of will's eye when he heard the news.
ReplyDeleteC3W1: C3PO's even more persnickety cousin.
ReplyDeleteCCWCooke's next column: Rush Limbaugh won't be invited to speak at Spelman. But he really, really should be, because otherwise how will black people learn how to take the bones out of their noses?
ReplyDeleteBy irregular speakers do they mean speakers who suffer from chronic constipation? I think Will would qualify for that.
ReplyDeleteWould that be the same magazine that let Mark Steyn go, after Steyn declined to cease his courageous fight against the Great Global Warming Swindle in which he and said magazine are co-defendants in a libel suit? One would almost think the mag was putting crass commercial considerations ahead of the principle of free speech.
ReplyDeleteThat's only because Bush is now supporting himself by selling his paintings.
ReplyDeleteOh! You meant that other guy who wore the Obama mask while getting trampled by bulls?
Speakers with one sleeve slightly longer, or maybe with a seam not sewn straight.
ReplyDeleteImagine if you went to, say, Comic-Con, and all the panelists refused to talk about the current projects they were involved in, and spent the whole time complaining about all the people in the movie business who screwed them over and how unfair it all was. Or a rock concert where the band spent thirty minutes dissing all their parents and teachers who told them to get real jobs. Man, wouldn't that get old real fast? But at NRO, it's not just a tic, it's a business model.
ReplyDeleteNow, obviously, not every column can be a unique and brilliant take on an issue of national importance. But the more "(X) didn't roll out the red carpet for me and now I'm sad :(" articles I read, the more I wonder what the magazine's various sugar daddies are hoping to get out of funding a pity party for a bunch of narcissistic mopes.
Not inviting notorious baby-killing sympathiser Barack Obama to speak at a graduation ceremony was also Notre Dame's prerogative ... but they went ahead and did it anyway, despite a cacophony of shrill conservative demands that he be dis-invited.
ReplyDeleteOne must never stand between a wingnut and the spigot dispensing white-collar welfare.
ReplyDelete.
speakers with bow ties that spin wildly in a circle.
ReplyDeleteThey mean ones that were stained or damaged in shipping, which, again, Mr. George qualifies for.
ReplyDeleteBut George Will is a towering paragon of right-wing intelle... ah, fuck it, and fuck Will.
ReplyDeleteDamn those liberals for having memories!
ReplyDeleteOooh, a squirrel!
I'd be able to see it but my monocle fell out.
ReplyDeleteYou'd never see C3W1 hanging out with a plebian maintenance droid!
ReplyDeleteAccording to the link, Will was part of Scripps' attempt to bring "irregular speakers to campus." That explains a lot. Wonder if he's heard about bran muffins.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that in neither piece did Cooke actually link to Will's "Sexual Victimhood: A Coveted Status That Confers Privileges" column, or quote any of the material which may have led to Scripps' decision.
ReplyDeleteMost of Cooke's immediate audience wouldn't object to "Sexual Victimhood", I'm guessing. It might prove problematic if Cooke's column were reprinted or linked in more mainstream outlets, though.
It's also something you expect poor people to make a hearty dinner out of.
ReplyDeleteand fuck Will.
ReplyDeleteDon't wanna. Doesn't he have people for that?
"First, trap your boot..."
ReplyDeleteIf (before they realised their mistake) the Scripps administration thought it was a good idea to pay a rape apologist to address their graduating class, then the students still have grounds for complaint.
ReplyDeletePrecisely what was he supposed to show them? That ignorance, dunderheadedness and an unbroken record of being wrong about everything need not stand in the way of a well-remunerated career? I suppose that is inspiring in a way.
Working theory: they thought they were inviting NBA point guard George Hill: ironically, whatever speech Hill would make would be better than whatever Will had planned.
ReplyDeleteOr, perhaps, someone on a committee thought, "hey, how about Garry Wills--he's a historian," and along the route to the chancellor, some bright person thought, "no, that's Garry Will, let's get it right," and then the chancellor thought, "no, that's George Will. Let's get him."
ReplyDeleteSort of like the old game of "telephone." You start off with Sherman Hemsley and end up with Pee-Wee Herman.
Squirrel?? Rocky was a squirrel. Who fought communists. Ooo, I hate communists, they're almost as bad as community organizers! But they were also Russians. [Sigh] I just love the way Vlad the Unshirted stomps on people he doesn't like. Damn squirrels! [BLAM!]
ReplyDeleteThat would have made the series really short.
ReplyDelete"Hey! Over here! The rebel princess is right here!"
Leia dies in shoot out with storm troopers.
Cut to C3W1 happily polishing Darth Vader's boots.
Pull out to show the Death Star rolling through the debris of yet another vaporized planet.
The End!
One would almost think the mag was putting crass commercial considerations ahead of the principle of free speech.
ReplyDeleteOne would first have to be excessively wrong about when and where principles of free speech apply.
Speaking of which, a really cool program would cause a little pop up whenever someone mentioned free speech or the 1st Am.
There'd be a little cartoon of Madison, with the text: "It looks like you're going to cite the 1st Amendment, which states: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.' Are you sure you'd like to proceed?"
It would still have to include the scene in which Vader says, "I find your lack of faith disturbing." But in the C3W1 version, Vader would be choking an entire suburban school board that had just adopted a biology textbook containing evolution.
ReplyDeleteWhy should he bother, when sycophants like Mr. Cooke are already getting in line for the pearl-clutching party?
ReplyDeleteOne has a busted woofer, the other a punctured tweeter, so it makes wheezing noises.
ReplyDeleteWasn't it George Will who found himself stranded in Minneapolis after flights were cancelled in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001? His solution to that was to buy a brand new Jaguar and drive home to DC. If he can buy a brand new Jaguar on a whim, he can pay someone to care when his odious opinions on sexual assault on college campuses, cost him a speaking gig on college campuses.
ReplyDelete...to *us*?
ReplyDeleteI read about Will's un-invitation at Inside Higher Ed yesterday, and wanted to scream at about every other commenter for exactly this mistake.
ReplyDeleteThe problem, I think, is that the pop-up cartoon in many people's heads is narrated by Sarah "Free speech means the right to be paid to say whatever crosses my mind" Palin rather than James Madison.
Monocle Alinsky?
ReplyDeleteImagine if you went to, say, Comic-Con, and all the panelists refused to
ReplyDeletetalk about the current projects they were involved in, and spent the
whole time complaining about all the people in the movie business who
screwed them over and how unfair it all was.You attended Alan Moore's panel, I see.
Goatse.
ReplyDelete